Halfway to Whole
by The Bickering Kingdom
Summary: One shot. Sometimes it takes a while to become whole again.


**Darkness**

She can no longer sleep with the light off. The thought of being alone in the darkness makes her want to curl up in a ball and cry. As a child, she had missed being afraid of the dark phase. It seemed cruel the universe would inflict it on her now when she was an adult.

Sometimes she slept with the television on other times she leaves on the lamp beside her bed. When she wakes up in a cold sweat, the light calms her racing mind and heart; the few hours of precious sleep she gets are never enough to make her feel rested or erase the bags under eyes.

**Strawberries**

Julie Finlay used to love cheeseburgers before the coma, but when she woke everything she tried tasted wrong. Foods she loved were like chewing on garbage. Cheeseburgers especially were what she imagined a sweaty sock at the bottom of a dumpster flavour to be.

Her doctor didn't know why the scans and tests didn't show any problem. Maybe it was psychological; she had gone through a terrible trauma both physically and mentally.

The only two things that remained the same were coffee and strawberries.

**Blood**

She doesn't mean to scratch the insect bites on her arm until they bleed. The redraw sore skin stings with every bit of oozing blood.

D.B cleans them up, suggests she takes a few days off work, shuts down her protests and keeps a caring yet annoying closer eye on after that.

It doesn't matter how many times she tells people that she's coping, she's fine; nobody believes it. Perhaps it's the bag under her eyes or the weight loss or her arms taken far longer to heal than should.

**Thunder**

Thunder roars like a billion angry lions in the sky. She's stuck in the memory of that night; the one she never speaks about because if she talks about then, it's all real. The Gig Harbour killer in her apartment, the fear, the pain, the darkness becomes real.

She can't breathe; she feels like she's dying. Curled up on the locker room floor, Sara found her like this, and she's too far down the rabbit hole of fear to feel embarrassed.

"Finn, just take a deep breath and count with me," Sara whispers, her voice is calm and full of concern.

**Sand**

Finn isn't sure why D.B had dragged into the middle of the desert to eat lukewarm pizza, but she likes it here. The night air smells like moss and sand; it's chilly, but she can't feel the cold with a blanket draped over her shoulders.

The world is calm and peaceful; she loves it.

"How's the pizza?" D.B asks, taking a bite out of his second slice.

"Good. Weird combo though but it works," Finn replies, resting her head on his shoulders. He makes a comfortable pillow.

"Cheesy Jalapeño and Strawberry pizza is not a weird a combination," D.B tells her, and she smiles for the first time in months.

The memory of him making a chocolate button and jelly babies omelettes in Seattle comes rushing back. They were gross no one, but he liked them.

**Lights**

The strip is alive. It's buzzing with people and lights. Finn is drunk; the world is spinning, and Greg is giving her piggyback. She's lost her shoes somewhere but doesn't care.

She feels like she's flying through the street, her cheeks hurt from grinning and laughing, Morgan stumbles beside them giggling with drunken laughter.

In the morning when she sober, she'll have the hangover from hell. But right now, Finn is alive with lights and laughter; she wishes it would last forever.

**Water**

The bathwater is warm, it smells like jasmine, and it soothes her aching muscles. She slides further down until the fluffy, jasmine-scented bubbles consume her body. Feeling the dirt and sweat fall off her skin makes her feel like a whole new person.

D.B is cooking in her kitchen, pasta and veggies. She's hungry. The first time she's felt real hunger since she woke from her coma. It makes her giddy. She's slowly becoming herself again; It's taken months, but for the first time, she sees the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

The other day Sara shared a cookie with her, and it tasted the way she remembered it had before the coma. Finn had that same feeling of giddiness.

**Butterflies**

Finn isn't sure whose idea it was to get tattoos. She, Morgan and Sara had gone out for a girls night. Vodka shots were drunk like water.

Laughter was like a never-ending song. Someone suggested getting a tattoo as a symbol of what they had survived. She thinks it might have been Sara.

They got butterflies. Sara got this majestic blue butterfly. It was so realistic that Finn half expected it to fly off her skin and up towards the sky.

Morgan's green, a beautiful shade of emerald surrounded by water; It's like something out of one of those fantasy books that Finn loves to read.

Finn's wasn't beautiful or majestic it was like something out of a horror movie, but the more she looked at it in the light of day with sober eyes, the more she loved it.

It was a forever reminder that evil can mark you; it can scar your skin with its hideousness, but can never own you. Sometimes it takes days, weeks even years to figure that out but when someone does they halfway there to becoming whole.

* * *

**I decided to use some of the prompts from this long prompt list I have to write these little snippets. I have at least 6 Finn stories in my drafts that working on so expect more stories soon.**


End file.
